08 October 2007

Tolerance, 12th Century Style.

"The body of Rami Khader Ayyad, the 32-year-old director of Gaza's only Christian bookstore, bore a visible gunshot wound to the head, and an official at Gaza's Shifa Hospital said he was also stabbed numerous times. Ayyad had been missing since Saturday afternoon.

Ayyad regularly received anonymous death threats from angry people who accused him of missionary work, a rarity among Gaza's Christians. His store, which is associated with a Christian group called the Palestinian Bible Society, was firebombed in April.

"We feel Rami was killed for his Christian faith," said Simon Azazian, a spokesman at the Bible Society's head office in Jerusalem."

I am (for now) an Episcopalian. Why isn't my Church speaking out about such real attacks on the Faith, instead of focusing their energies on tearing apart the Anglican Communion over gay marriage and a pointy hat for Gene Robinson? What happened here is REAL persecution, folks. What happened here is real sacrifice for the Faith. Remember that next time Integrity throws a hissy-fit about the "sacrifices" of gays and lesbians in The Episcopal Church (tm).

And remember, too, that the people who murdered this man couldn't give a tinker's damn about "full inclusion", or the Millennium Development Goals and how hard The Episcopal Church (tm) works for their implementation, or how many General Convention resolutions were passed in support of peace in the Middle East and Palestinian rights. To them, the Christian Faith is not "another vehicle to the Devine", it is an abomination. An abomination that must, in the end, be eliminated.